Quaker gun

"Quaker guns" (logs used as ruses to imitate cannons) in former Confederate fortifications at Manassas Junction March 1862

Quaker gun near Centreville, Virginia, in March 1862, after the Confederate withdrawal; a man with a stick is pretending to "fire" it with a linstock

A Quaker gun is a deception tactic that was commonly used in warfare during the 18th and 19th centuries. Although resembling an actual cannon, the Quaker gun was simply a wooden log, usually painted black, used to deceive an enemy. Misleading the enemy as to the strength of an emplacement was an effective delaying tactic. The name derives from the Religious Society of Friends or "Quakers", who have traditionally held a religious opposition to war and violence in the Peace Testimony.

The "Quaker gun Trick" worked quite well. Colonel Washington aimed the wooden "cannon" toward the buildings the Loyalists had barricaded themselves in and threatened to open fire if they did not immediately surrender. Rugeley surrendered quickly his entire force without a single shot having been fired.[1]

Quaker guns made of pine logs were mounted in a ruse to fool the Union into believing that the Confederates were much better armed at the Siege of Port Hudson, Louisiana in 1863. Black rings were painted on the end of the logs to make the muzzles look convincing. It worked. After Admiral Farragut's two vessels passed by Port Hudson, the Union chose to never attack from the river again.

Quaker guns were used by both the North and South in the American Civil War. The Confederate States Army frequently resorted to them because of its shortage of artillery. The wooden guns were painted black and positioned in fortifications to delay Union assaults. Sometimes actual gun carriages were used in the deception.[2]

Another example happened during the Siege of Corinth. "During the night of May 29, the Confederate army moved out. They used the Mobile and Ohio Railroad to carry the sick and wounded, the heavy artillery, and tons of supplies. When a train arrived, the troops cheered as though reinforcements were arriving. They set up dummy Quaker guns along the defensive earthworks. Camp fires were kept burning, and buglers and drummers played. The rest of the men slipped away undetected..."[citation needed]

Quaker guns were also used to bolster Confederate fortifications during the Siege of Petersburg and assisted in prolonging the Confederate's hold on their positions against the overwhelmingly superior numbers of Union troops.[citation needed]

A similar idea was employed during the Doolittle Raid, which occurred in the early stages of the Pacific War of World War II, where Lieutenant Colonel Jimmy Doolittle led a squadron of B-25 Mitchells to bomb Tokyo. The early model B-25B had no guns installed in the tail section to help protect the planes from tail-end attacks. While modifying the bombers for the mission at Eglin Field, Florida, Doolittle had fake machine guns consisting of a pair of broomsticks painted black mounted at the tail end of the fuselage to simulate tail guns.[3]

The pre–World War I British battleship HMS Centurion was obsolete and disarmed by World War II. However, from 1942 to 1944, she was fitted with wooden guns and stationed in the eastern Mediterranean, to make British naval forces in the area seem stronger than they were.[citation needed]

Unlike a Quaker gun, a wooden cannon is a functional weapon, albeit notoriously weak and only able to fire a few shots, sometimes even just one shot, before bursting. These were used by those without access to metal or the skill to engineer metallic cannons.[4]